You got it, Jens!
And there are more gods with trinity aspect: in Babylon, Sumeria, Ancient Egypt, Greece, etc. and India of course) "Triratna" is a holy Buddist belief, there are also "three jewels" and "three bodies" concepts. There are numerous examples of 3dot pattern in Oriental/Asian arts, even "emperor" in Chinese consists of 3 horizontal lines, representing 3 elements, and the motif is dated to 2000 B.C.! Similar is seen in old Turkic culture (Orkhon inscriptions), etc, etc.

All this triplicity it is a philosophical categories. Please, believe me, the owner of this sword with three holes never thought about any Trinity or three States of matter. Otherwise we should meet such holes in the folk tradition of decorations of temples, images, and more.

Probably quite true. All we need to do is to know what this owner indeed WAS thinking.

Jim,
Don't you have a Ouija board? :-)

Salaams Jim, That at least cheered me up :)

All these odd signs on blades not only baffle the present day enthusiasts but probably puzzled a lot of folks in the past. I tie the two geometries of the 5 dots and the 3 dots together with Islamic ideas (beliefs and symbols)... In addition it has a large amount of Islamic Script...It should be remembered that the entire script is in its own right Talismanic.. These clues are therefor all probably linked ... Thus they are linked probably to the same general Talismanic theme of protection against evil..

The use of the figure 3 flows across boundaries and can be seen for example, in the Trio in Juncta (Trinity) in the Fleur de Lys which enters European Heraldry with its design style. I note your Tamerlane details and other regions from Alex and Jens above...however, I think in this case the dots are related and supported since the blade is Islamic scripted pointing to the Islamic nature of the blades decoration.

Mercenary ..Good points but in the case of the 3 dots and triangles they are very much represented in the Arab countries and can be seen...in rugs and textiles as well as on clothing and placed on Jewellery across the entire Islamic spectrum as well as the geometric figure 5 on pendants and finger rings...and the hand as a decorative piece of jewellery giving protection to the owner.

I applaud the award of the Nobel Prize and look forward to the presentation! :)

As an after note did you notice the single dot lower down the blade... This dot represents the centre of the universe ... again Talismanic.

Regards,
Ibrahiim al Balooshi.